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[caligulas_aquarium]

this is eridan
aint here right noww so if its important just leavve a message
otherwwise fuck off

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[speakveryclearly]

[You know, there's always accepting that he's not getting rid of her. Just a thought. The measuring process continues. All its normal parts. Measuring around the neck: Actually a normal part.

And, uh, leaning up so he can hear her is a normal part of her being shorter than him in this timeline.]

By the way, it's virtually impossible that my ex-ashenmate has met his fate in the way you conjecture.

[caligulas_aquarium]

[Silly Kanaya, that idea is entirely dependent on Eridan not being a raging douchebag. In any case he's still silent for a few seconds after she speaks, as if he's considering whether or not to respond.]

What makes you say that?

[speakveryclearly]

[Tension - her fangs for a moment aren't entirely hidden by her lips until... they are again.]

You described a vengeful rainbow drinker enacting violence on her sire. [She removes the tape and wraps it around his chest.] And he's not mine. Any more than you are.

[caligulas_aquarium]

Maybe it's a different Kan, then. Ain't no guarantee the pair a' you were from the same timeline.

[speakveryclearly]

[...he had the wand DON'T THINK ABOUT THAT KANAYA YOU'RE MAKING PROGRESS HERE] Of course not. There are a multitude of timelines in paradox space. [Tape goes loose...]

Including the one where we were friends, which blows the Maryam-Ampora hate destiny hypothesis almost entirely out of the water, but I think I'm on a tangent now.

[CLOSED TAPE.]

[caligulas_aquarium]

Yeah, well-

[Okay, so it doesn't necessarily convince him that other Eridan isn't dead by now and seething in his own bitter rage much like he does, but at the same time she's right. She is already dead and on top of that she's a lot more attached to him and that other Eridan than Kanaya ever really was in the entire time he knew her.

So...aside mentioning the Matriorb, he can't really think of anything to say about that. Maybe she is just different.

Maybe.

But...]

How long does this measurin' thing usually take.

[Yeah fuck this lets just ignore things we can't argue around BEST PLAN.]

[speakveryclearly]

[As she descends to measure his leg, he probably can't see anything besides a slight, sharpening light, but her lips have bent into a little crooked smirk. She's gotten somewhere, she can feel it. And thank god, this couldn't have come soon enough.]

A while. Not much longer.

[caligulas_aquarium]

Fine.

[Going back to not talking then, in a petulant manner. In fact if he could, he'd even cross his arms. HE'S JUST DOING HIS WHOLE ROYAL AND NOBLE CASTE PROUD RIGHT NOW YEAH.]

[speakveryclearly]

[Ironically enough, she no longer even needs his arms. He could cross them all he likes. Sucks for you, Eridan, doesn't it? But his legs seem to be the last part, as after those she straightens up and turns to write everything down on one of her pieces of sketch paper.]

[caligulas_aquarium]

[Well he sure can CROSS HIS ARMS NOW.]

So we're done now, right.

[speakveryclearly]

[A silence.]

Yes. [Left unspoken is "Unless You Dont Want It To Be". Because she's getting it, however slowly. He wants it to be.

Wait, she'd thought about this, she remembers - as she turns to leave and then doesn't - something else she needed to say to him.]

You know. I understand that you want me to hate you. But I really can't comprehend why. Not the causes either, I mean, you explained those and don't need to again. The reasoning for why it would be better that way.

[caligulas_aquarium]

I got a bunch of reasons it'd be better.

[Like...idk.]

[speakveryclearly]

You can be miserly with them if you like. I'm only asking for one.

1/2

[caligulas_aquarium]

Ooooookay, what about...

[Yeah he pauses for a second to actually think.

If this isn't indicative of the fact he clearly hasn't thought much about why, then what the fuck is.]

[caligulas_aquarium]

Okay, say we do put aside the fact all the murders happened an' generally didn't ewen like each other's company all that much before your little year's stay in that loony bin a' yours.

Then we be friends.

One of us could leawe. So either you'd hawe to go through all this again or I'd hawe to deal with a Kan' who does wanna kill me an' awoids the shit outta me all the time an' we'd all be back to square one.

It's just easier awoidin' that kinda situation isn't it.

[There, see, he's even pretending to take your feelings into account too. Isn't he just so nice.]

[speakveryclearly]

Why would-- [--one of us leave, she almost asks, but then she realizes it, that he's implying it'd happen to her all over again, and it should have been obvious before, that if people came here and had their little disappearances all at random controlled by unseen forces, all uncannily similar to the way the doctors treated everyone, then of course they would leave at seemingly random too, she should have known, what did she even think the alternative was--

She has to be sure, though, before taking this into account. There has to be at least a hint of hope to destroy.]

Are you implying that people just disappear at the drop of a head covering here, too?

[caligulas_aquarium]

[He counts each of the following names out with his fingers as he says them.]

Sol, Kar', Nep', Gam' hawe been here twice.

Taw an' Wris' was here once.

Fef' came an' gone a' total a' three times.

Me' an' Eq' are the only ones who came once an' stayed, eight months straight.

[speakveryclearly]

[This has probably come up already - thinking back to the instance of Feferi she's almost sure it did - why didn't she remember it? If she's forgotten it before, it was probably on purpose because it's just - just such a painful idea.]

...So.

Compare the scenarios where one of us leaves - six Earth months from now, say. Nothing could change that - after that - we'd be apart from each other, regardless of how we acted prior. Would you rather spend the six months in the interim... just waiting for that, or having a friend.

Wait, I'm sure that was the wrong way to phrase that...

[caligulas_aquarium]

I'd rather wait.

[He...genuinely looks a little sad then, however briefly.]

Look, just - eweryone who shows up is gonna hate me from the getgo. Then ewentually they'll go back. Another one'll show up, they'll hate me again.

It's easier to just hate eweryone an' hawe them hate me than to build up a buncha friendships that won't last.

Cause they won't. I know they won't.

[Granted in the case of several trolls he wants nothing to do with them, and it's less than half the whole group he even would want to be friends with again.

Just saying everyone is a lot more dramatic.]

[speakveryclearly]

...

[There are so many promises she wants to make right now - But I'll never leave you, Eridan, it'd be so easy to say and if it were entirely her own choice it might even be true... but it isn't.]

...

[Dammit, she doesn't want to wait, but of course she can't just say this because he doesn't listen to her anymore DAMN IT ALL--]

I can't promise that our friendship would last... beyond... a departure.

But... [...damn... it...] You don't seem to accept or reject your other friendships on that account.

[caligulas_aquarium]

At least if the likes a' Ros' or Rox' gone an' came back they wouldn't just go "oh fuck it's Eridan again I hate that guy I don't want nothin' to do with him, why ain't he still dead."

I at least got some hope a' tryin' again.

[speakveryclearly]

[Ah yes an OPENING oh she's relieved he brought it up first--]

Do you think the other trolls would allow you to have that hope? Haven't you seen how they've already actually tried to turn Roxy against you? Wouldn't they be much more likely to succeed if she suddenly didn't know you and heard about everything that happened in the veil without any context?

[It'd take someone REALLY IN LOVE WITH HIM TO NOT CARE ABOUT THAT, just saying. Just. Saying.]

People have already told her that dating you is a mistake once. It's virtually guaranteed that they'd try to, as they saw it, "prevent her from making the same mistake again."

I'm sorry to say it, but dating her is hardly safer than being friends with me would be, if you're basing it on whether we disappear. The entire tragedy of termination is in its caprice. It could strike any one of us at any time. Even you, and then you wouldn't even be in a place to worry about whoever you'd left behind.

[caligulas_aquarium]

[Wow Kanaya make him hate everyone else even more why don'tcha.

Still.

Fuck.

She's right. Just losing her as a friend right now would be pretty bad since the quadrant's still new so it wouldn't be AS big a deal as it could be. But given enough time and it could matter. It could matter even more than it does right now.

He's so used to thinking alongside him, Equius, Feferi and Sollux are the only ones here. Only one of them is really liable of trying to ruin any potential friendship he could have with a new Roxy and even then he figured he'd be as much a stranger to her as Eridan would be. He could talk her into giving him a chance if it's just one guy.

But two? Three? Every single troll but him, even.

There'd be absolutely no chance.

Yeah he doesn't......really say anything he's thinking this over. And it hurts to think about.]

[speakveryclearly]

[It hurts to think about a lot. She knows this. She's looking at him intensively, thinking about this. She gives him a little while. Then she speaks up again, quietly.]

We shouldn't have to act like any of us could disappear. Then we'd need to act as if any of us could appear, and then we might as well act as if the demon is on our vestigial tails again.

You've really been avoiding the actual question of why you wouldn't want to have me be your friend. You've demonstrated already you would rather I continue doing you favors and services. I'd... offer to ply you with more clothing but even if you felt like you needed it you might have to finance it because the Masquerade approaching I've begun to run out of marques...

[caligulas_aquarium]

Cause I hate her, which ewen if you ain't you sorta got the exact same look a' her about you. You ewen sound exactly like her, for the most part act exactly like her aside obwiously wantin' my decapitated head on a nutrition plateau.

Is it really so hard to understand that lookin' at you really pisses me off cause a' what happened an' apparently I'm not allowed to feel that way, with you an' literally all the other trolls an' ewen my own matesprit tellin' me so.

An' that maybe it's just a really confusin' an' complicated situation that pisses me off I got no idea what to do with.

I mean if you hate someone an' you're not allowed to hate them cause they ain't them but they remind you of them in nearly ewery single way, what the fuck are you supposed to do.

Ewen if you were just, y'know, a regular troll it'd make it easier. But you're not.